The free flamenco concert by beautiful people turns out to be a good omen as my day becomes sated with many, many more free concerts …
However, right before that, I am still in food hell … Finally find a chicken-only Paella and decide to go all out and try it a second time even though the serving seems rather large. Err! Ain’t got the chicken one, we only have mixta with piscada, gambaaas … noooooooooo no no mixta. I’ll have a Mexican wrap please … First bite into it and I am thinking, serves me right for ordering a Mexican wrap at a Spanish bar. Pffff! Wash it down con some Coke Zero and some decent Spanish desert.
Coke Zero … Varun told me the story … Apparently they came out with some name for Diet/Light Coke which didn’t go down very well with the men, the ladies liked it just fine … so in order to maximize their market Coke came up with Coke Zero … I like ;)
Hop on, hop off the Metro … and we are on our way to Park Güell …
Now this is a park Gaudi built “The park was originally part of a commercially unsuccessful housing site, the idea of Count Eusebi Güell, whom the park was named after. It was inspired by the English garden city movement; hence the original English name Park (in the Catalan language spoken in Catalonia where Barcelona is located, the word for "Park" is "Parc", and the name of the place is "Parc Güell" in its origin language).”* … we are feeling all the love for Gaudi so we walk walk walk … but where is the park … its coming, its coming …eee … stop,
A la derecha …
Turn left and behold, an escalator. Whaaaattt? I did not sign up for that. Check all the signs … everything points and says Park Güell is up the escalator. Ohkie then! We climb, another escalator, ok, and another, and another, and then a slope (ohh I have to walk now? The escalators were doing just fine), and another escalator, and another … by this time all this seems like a very, very evil joke …
But eventually we make it to the park … and its worth the walk … you can see Barca from here, can even see the la sagrada familia … top view ;) … nice, nice we likes …
but hey what’s that we hear? Why it’s exotic music … we follow the direction where the sound of music is coming from … we walk some and we see a whole band … playing rumba and something else, it’s a bit of a mix and the band calls the music ‘originaaaaaaaaalllll’ … they are a very fun band called ‘el tumbao de juana’ … they entertain their audience to the T and it is quite an audience they have at the top hill of the park ... dancing, singing along, and clapping … we have a very good time with the band … the last song the band plays is a song for ‘travellers’ … oh we mucho mucho gusto! : )
we are sad to walk away from a band full of not-so-clean but very hot, and fun Spaniards … next up is yet another band … it’s a guitar trio … que bueno yet again … this time we sit, and relax, and let the guitar playing serenade us … we walk away again and just down the stairs, at the main and actual entrance to the park a man is playing an instrument we have never heard or seen before … it’s a metal plate that makes different sounds when one hits different spots on it … we like it very much indeed, the sound is beautiful … walk out and there is another trio playing the didgeridoo and a couple of other instruments … by this time we have lost the energy to keep track of all the instruments and the music … if we were a music collector we would have paid more attention … we would like to be a music collector but there is no space left on the memory card of our camera by this time …
so we walk away from the park feeling very, very musically and architecturally enriched …
we get back to our hostel … we rest a little …
at about 7 I begin to feel that my body isn’t feeling McDonalds heavy … so I begin to think about food … by now I’m desperately missing Indian food … I had thought that I’d be meeting Varun today as well … but he keeps busy at college until 8 pm on some days … yes you heard that right … that boy works hard at Uni …
So, I decide that I should go out on my own and look for some Indian if I can or else settle for some Tapas which I haven’t had yet… or so I think (later realize that I have actually had them)
A block away I see a shop that reads Omar something and I decide to give it a shot … inside I see the shawarma set up so I get the ‘hit the jackpot’ feeling again … I go to the counter and ask for a shawarma roll …
The balding man behind the counter figures that I’m Indian … and he tries his luck with ‘if you talk to me in Punjabi then I will give you a good shawarma roll but if you talk to me in English or Spanish it will be an ok one’ of course he says all this in Punjabi …
I’m a bit taken aback but I start talking to him in Punjabi. He gives me a roll, I take a bite and in my head I’m going, dude I thought you were giving me a ‘good roll’ because I AM talking to you in Punjabi.
Anywho having made the bad decision to have the roll at the restaurant and not have it packed, I listen to the bugger yap away about how nice it is to meet people from back home yada yada yada … all this time I’m literally trying to inhale the roll so I can scram from the place because by now the guy is beginning to seem creepy … but wait, there’s more …
I’m only halfway through the damn thing and he asks me how long I’m staying for etc. Since I’m only in Barca for one more day I safely say ‘Oh! I’m only here tomorrow, day after I leave …’
‘Why don’t you have a meal here tomorrow as well’ he pounces on the opportunity.
‘I don’t know’ I say, ‘I have a friend who lives here and I am going to go see him before I leave so it won’t be possible but thank you’
‘Well that’s dinner right, what about lunch’ he pounces again.
‘Erm, I will be looking around the city so I will eat wherever I am’. Since the restaurant is in Sants which doesn’t really have any tourist spots nearby I’m guessing he will understand that it isn’t possible.
But errrrrr wrong again. He doesn’t understand and insists and insists and insists.
By this time I’m very uncomfortable and since there is only one other customer at the restaurant … who erm is leaving now? Why? … I begin to get very restless … I somehow wash down the rest of the roll superspeedily and get up to leave …
And baldy starts off again about how nice it is to talk to someone in his own language and how it can get really lonely here, so far away from home, and ‘you must, must, must have lunch with me tomorrow and I won’t take no for an answer’ …
Now I am realllly uncomfortable. I go into protective mode and say ‘ok well, I will see you for lunch for a short bit, how about that’ … in my head I am making a mental image of him so I can get a restraining order against him …
‘Well what time will you come?’ he says.
‘Umm how about 2’ I say unflinchingly and convincingly.
‘Sounds great! When you come, just stand by the door and wait for me for a couple of minutes. Before we sit down for lunch, I will take you for a ride on my bike!’ he grins.
‘Oh yeah? Which bike do you own?’ I ask instinctively.
He points to a baby mopet parked outside the door and says ‘well it’s a small one’ feeling as small as the mopet I’m guessing.
‘I own two cars as well though. And I own this shop. And I send money home, to my parents every month’ he says ‘all that’s missing is some good company here’.
Alarm bells are ringing in my head so I say ‘well see you’ and jog out of the restaurant, and run back to my hostel, laughing all the way …
This was at about 7:30 pm
At 10 Varun calls and I go meet him at Barrio Gothica, taking the metro to Liceu estacion where he is supposed to meet me … laughing all the way … I’m still laughing when I meet him … and tell him about the incident. Its been quite an interesting evening, and he agrees …
We walk through some charming streets and make it to a pub where many 1st year and 2nd year students from his University are meeting for what’s called a ‘bao’ or ‘bar’, can’t remember … but they basically all get together for drinks …
When we walk into the place, Lionel and Daniel from the previous night are already there, along with some new people … forgive me new people, you were far too many for me to remember all the names … but I do remember Alec, Jonathan, Fabio, and sweet guy from Cochin … and we spot AJ and Elena, the girls from the previous night as well at some point …
After some nice MBA type mingling, we step out as the pub becomes beyond stuffy and spend the last 45 minutes outside, in the cool Barca night breeze … after which we call it a night, rather early, at about 2 : )
Back at the dorm, it’s the same scene … when I walk in everyone moves … spewing curses under their breath …
The next morning I wake up very late for some reason and miss breakfast at the hostel … not that I missed much …
Oh and the morning before when I woke up, around 9 … and stepped into the common girl’s bathroom, what do I see? I see a 14 year old dressed as a hooker … she is wearing a very, very mini skirt, some panty hose, a gunjee that is torn in various places, so she’s basically wearing the remains of a gunjee revealing an evocative bustier, the spots where the gunjee is torn are being put together with some rather large safety pins … of course the make-up is very noir, and the hair is big, and the boots are high … 9 a.m., teenager, dressed as a hooker … i begin to wonder how much I had to drink the night before, I know I didn’t drink too much … how is this happening … anyway I brush my teeth and make it to breakfast and the girl follows … soon after, a couple of more people dressed as inappropriately as her early in the morning walk in as well … and slowly it begins to make sense … Halloween is around the corner …. Ohhhhhhhhhhh all right, then its ok. But, still. Why are they doing this at like 9 a.m. Shouldn’t they go out in the evening or something … heck, I couldn’t be bothered.
This morning it’s the same thing … I walk into the girl’s room and there 5 more girls besides the teenager from the previous morning … I close my eyes!
After the morning’s delightful sights I need some soulful escape … so I head seawards …
As I walk towards the beach something in me begins to calm down so magically and quickly, as if I am home … I almost never feel this, anywhere … the sun melts away the layers of alertness that I wear since I am travelling alone … its warmth smoothes over the lines of smug worry that mark my face … and I sit down on one of the wooden decks to watch the fish make merry in the green-blue Barcelona waters …
by now I begin to feel like I’m living one of those cranked up shots wherein the protagonist is in slow motion whilst everyone and everything around her is in fast forward … Oh! What a feeling …
A fellow traveller comes and sits next to me, too close for comfort but it doesn’t bother me … with Marc Streitenfield playing some good old ‘A good year’ symphonies in my ears, I’m impervious …
And I sit there, at the deck for the longest time, not feeling hungry, or thirsty, or lonely, or anything … but peaceful and calm as a golden sun-bathed brook …
After about an hour or so which seemed like only a moment in time, I walk towards the bridge … still in that place in my mind, still impervious … the music playing in my ears isn’t too loud but I cannot hear a thing besides the music, the gentle sound of the ocean in my heart and the creaking of the film roll in my eyes … it’s a wonderful place to be …
At some point though I’m shaken into coming back … a man with his aggressive histrionics is trying to tell me something … I look around and I am the only one on this part of the bridge. The other people are cordoned off by two mini barricades on the two ends of the bridge … I look back towards the man and now realize that he is asking me to ‘move it’ … I hasten towards the nearer end of the wooden bridge and soon as I do that … the bridge splits open, giving way to a sailboat to pass through to the waterfront, which has been waiting for the bridge to do so … after the sailboat passes through into the ‘water parking lot’ ; ), the bridge closes up again, as if nothing ever happened … in my head I’m thinking ‘hmm! That’s one new thing I learnt today’ : P
After that it’s back to far, far away as I take a rather long walk, hand-in-hand with the Barcelona waters … and I feel … something beyond words …
After some time I find myself at an eatery at the beach … I order a yummy salad, herbed chicken, fries, tomatoes and cheese combo con beer … and oh! Yeah … we’re feeling good food-wise as well …
The need to continue to savour what I’ve just been through is so overpowering that I decide not to see anything else that afternoon and just be … so I take the metro back to the hostel and just lie in my bed, thinking, and wondering, and being … ‘need to be with myself and centre, clarity, peace, serenity … I hope you know, I hope you know, that this has nothing to do with you …’
In the evening I head out again in the search of that essence of Barcelona … after doing a round of laundry at the hostel of course … I’m leaving Barca tomorrow, I don’t know if I can do laundry in France …
I haven’t seen the Picasso museum … I should’ve, I wanted to … but now I don’t have the time … I need to walk my favourite part of the city one last time … So there I am lost and found once again in the cobbled tiny streets of the quarters … in and out of plazas … into lonely patches, and some not so lonely ones, some dodgy ones and some not so much … its wonderful, I’m saying goodbye to another friend, another new friend, another friend for a lifetime …
At some point I do take out my ginormous map of the city and realize that I am somewhere close to the museum … If I ask someone for help with directions I might just make it, its only 6 … but I cannot ask anyone, I’m not in that space … I just walk round and round, not understanding my map, hoping that I do …
Soon my left foot begins to hurt and my stomach finds a solution – find a place to eat and rest a bit …
I look for tapas … tapas, tapas everywhere … the choice is varied. Ideally I want to eat at an authentic looking taverna on a clandestine, dodgy road … and even though I see many, I soon find myself back at Ramblas … and oh! Here’s another restaurant and let’s just go in now …
I try my f***-all Spanish (I’ve realized that now) and the waiter sees through it and asks me politely ‘What would you like?’ … he’s uncannily polite, almost familiar … I ask him to give me a few minutes and scan the place … well of course, it’s being run by a bunch of Indians … A very nice one from behind the cash counter hollers at me and says ‘You HAVE to try our Sangria, it’s the best around here, ask anyone’ …
I smile at him, thanking him for the tip, and lying ‘Perhaps another day, I don’t feel like it right now’ … I have no idea why I said that, considering I’m leaving tomorrow … I enjoy white lies a lot … Soon I order some decent choice of tapas, and they turn out to be quite all right actually …
But at some point I can hear hushed voices behind the counters saying something in Punjabi … at this point I can’t understand what they’re saying … but soon I figure out … as the polite waiter goes to the people behind the counter and says ‘Sharam karo, bhehena wargi hai’ … (Shame on you, she’s like our sister) … he’s saying that because he knows that I am from India …
The nice man who had talked to me about the Sangria and who’s not part of the ‘shameful’ conversation at some point asks me where I am from …
‘I’m from India’ I say, ‘New Delhi. Where are you from?’
‘From Punjab. What are you doing here?’
‘I’m just travelling around’ I say.
‘Where do you stay now, UK?’
‘No, I’m from India’ I repeat.
‘But you stay in the UK?’
‘No I stay in India … just here on holiday’ … I assure him, befuddling the migrant in him who cannot understand how people from New Delhi can reach a standard of living that allows them to travel to Europe for leisure … Its beyond him and I don’t blame him for that … If only he came back to India and saw how things have changed in the last decade …
After that the boys behind the counter chat about me a bit more … a girl their age from India must feel like gold-rush in a foreign land full of foreign women they don’t understand … poor men! They are still talking in Punjabi about me, thinking I am Indian but don’t speak Hindi or Punjabi … Sangria man soon tells them in Spanish that I do understand Hindi/Punjabi and that I actually live in India and am here on holiday … the boys break off the party and one of them who is Pakistani tries to chat me up … but I am a closed book that evening … I’m in another place where I have no time, space, or slack to entertain a lonesome migrant …
I quickly finish my dinner, thank the polite waiter and Sangria man and leave … I text Varun and ask him the address for the place he had mentioned last night where I can catch a Flamenco performance for about 7 Euros … I also tell him that we could meet for a goodbye drink after the concert … he says we could but I can tell that he is beyond tired … Au revoir Varoon, take good care of yourself …
… I cannot believe that I don’t remember the name of the bar where I went for the concert but it was somewhere on Plaza Real, it costs about 7 Euros for ticket to a half hour concert and one has to book about an hour or a half hour before the show and then stand in a not so long queue to get in … the wise thing to do is to buy a ticket an hour in advance, go for a quick beer, and then queue up about 20 minutes before the show so you can get a decent seat … and believe you me, once you’re in ‘it really, really is worth it!’ … It’s a highly commercialized act wherein they give you a compact dose, a quick high and off you go but … for 7 Euros, I’m all for it.
Anywho after that, it’s a quite walk back to the hostel, a quite half an hour of packing, and zzz.
The next morning its back to lugging duties and … this time … we’re taking a 6 hour bus ride to France … Looking forward to it. In the bus I find an empty seat and no one comes and takes the seat next to me … I’m more than happy with that! Having carried the luggage from the hostel to the bus station, which was a 10 minute walk, I go off to sleep as soon as my behind comes in contact with the coach seat!
A little later I am woken up by the sweeeeeetteeessst man and he is asking me ‘Is this seat taken?’ in Spanish … I say not at all ... and then pinch myself. : ) No I am not dreaming!
* Wikipedia
shruti.cristina.barcelona - parte dos
